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Book Suggests Alexander Hamilton Was Jewish
NATIONAL DAVID RULLO | JE FEATURE
8 FEBRUARY 24, 2022
Andrew Porwancher
not so much finding a smoking
gun document that no one else
had uncovered,” he said, “but
it was a willingness to look at
evidence that’s long been there
with fresh eyes. And then,
from there, go down a rabbit
hole that involved uncovering
archival material that hadn’t
been looked at before.”
Porwancher spent seven
years researching and piecing
together the Jewish trail
of evidence, starting with
Hamilton’s stepfather, Johann
Michael Lavien, and his
mother’s possible conversion to
Judaism before marrying the
Danish businessman.

Porwancher also reexam-
ined the business dealings of
Lavien, a merchant living in the
Caribbean. Other historians
argue that Lavien wasn’t Jewish
because he wasn’t identified
as Jewish in the Danish Land
Records and census registers.

While Porwancher agrees that
Lavien isn’t listed as Jewish, after
examining more than 3,000
records, he found that none of
the other Jews on St. Croix were
identified as Jewish either.

In addition, the author
took a fresh look at Lavien’s
Courtesy of Andrew Porwancher
surname and its variants, his
business dealings with other
Jews and even the fact that
Rachel and Johann’s son Peter
— though not raised Jewish —
was not baptized by the couple.

The book, Porwancher said,
makes two related arguments.

“The first is that there is a
probabilistic case to be made
that Alexander Hamilton is
born and raised Jewish,” he
said. “The second part of the
argument is that, although
Hamilton reinvents himself as
a Christian and has no Jewish
identity in his American adult-
hood, he develops a closer
relationship with the American
Jewish community than does
any other American founders.”
Hamilton, Porwancher
writes, supported the cause
of civic equality for America’s
Jews at a time when antisem-
itism was often wielded as
a cudgel in mainstream
American politics.

Although Porwancher’s
book looks specifically at the
question of Jewish identity
through the eyes of Alexander
Hamilton, it also wrestles with
what that identity might mean
for America.

JEWISH EXPONENT
Princeton University Press
ANDREW PORWANCHER
is uncomfortable drawing
comparisons between himself
and Lin-Manuel Miranda,
the creator of the musical
“Hamilton.” “I’m hesitant to say that
Lin-Manuel Miranda and
I are engaged in a collective
endeavor of reimagining the
story [of Alexander Hamilton]
from a minority perspective
because I don’t want to cast
myself in the same league as
one of the creative geniuses of
our time,” Porwancher said.

And yet both Porwancher,
a historian and author, and
Miranda have found new ways
to chronicle the journeys of
minorities in America through
the story of one of the country’s
founding fathers: Alexander
Hamilton. Miranda did so through
his casting and musical score
accompanying his Broadway
hit “Hamilton”; Porwancher
does so in his book “The Jewish
World of Alexander Hamilton”
(Princeton University Press),
which explores the question of
whether Hamilton was born
and raised Jewish.

Porwancher is the Ernest
May Fellow at Harvard
University and the Wick
Cary Associate Professor at
the University of Oklahoma.

He said his enthusiasm for
examining information from
a different perspective is what
distinguishes his book from
others about Hamilton.

It’s long been known,
Porwancher said,
that Hamilton’s
mother was
named Rachel Faucett Lavien
and that he was educated in
Jewish schools. But no other
Hamilton scholar, Porwancher
said, has seriously reckoned
with evidence that indicates a
Jewish identity on the part of
the founding father.

“My entry into this topic was
The historian said he
wouldn’t be surprised if some
Jews find solace from the
notion that Hamilton might
have been Jewish, especially as
antisemitism has resurfaced
with new vigor.

Other readers, he said, have
taken umbrage.

“To be candid, I have
received hate mail from
specifically those kinds of
people who are profoundly
disturbed at the prospect
that an American founder
might be Jewish,” Porwancher
said. “They think that I am
somehow undermining the
notion that America, from its
inception, has been a funda-
mental Christian country.”
The author also was
concerned with not promoting
antisemitic tropes in his book.

“The notion that I’ve uncov-
ered evidence that the patron
saint of Wall Street may have
been hiding a secret, Jewish
identity — that fear dovetails
all too seamlessly with the
kind of conspiracy theories
involving bankers that are
common today,” he said.

While Porwancher doesn’t
think of himself as traversing
the same creative circles as
Miranda, there is no doubt
that his book, like Miranda’s
musical, has widened the
conversation about one of
America’s founding fathers.

“The Jewish World of
Alexander Hamilton,”
published in August, was
selected by the Journal of the
American Revolution as its
2021 Book of the Year. l
David Rullo is a staff writer with the
Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, an
affiliated publication of the Jewish
Exponent. JEWISHEXPONENT.COM